President’s Dispatch

Welcome to 2010.

We enter another year not knowing what the future will bring apart from the Christmas credit card statement and the attempt to shed some of the kilos that we have gained through over-indulgence during the festive season….

Currently, I am reading “Gallipoli Sniper” by John Hamilton (Herald Sun fame) about the famous WW1 sniper William ‘Billy’ Sing, a Queenslander, son of a Chinese father and an English Mother.

A century ago, Australia was a very different place to what we know to-day. The hardships we consider ourselves to experience these days pale into insignificance when compared to the privations and sense of duty that many of our forebears took for granted, they rolled their sleeves up and just got on with the job. Their troubles were many and their pleasures few. One of these pleasures that many men undertook was rifle shooting. Many grew up in the country and used a firearm to hunt for food and many also took to the Rifle Range for competition shooting and they were very good at it.

We all know that these days we would run face-first into a wall of bias, criticism and disdain if we contemplated re-introducing large scale shooting facilities for the population. (Remember the Ballarat East Rifle Range drama?) How many miles would we have to go out of town to set up and with all the planning regulations and other red tape would we encounter, would it be possible? In the meantime I urge all members to attend the Ballarat Pistol Club evening on February 24 th (Pistol Club road, Mt Rowan). BBQ and ‘try-before-you-buy’ club shooting.

One chapter of the book deals with the voluntary rush to enlist in 1914, these days there is a slow steady trickle of enlistees into the Australian Defence Force, even after having spent $55 million on advertising. Are today’s youth so self absorbed that they do not believe that their country is worthy of their service. Where is their National pride? Where is their ‘sense of duty’? Today’s Defence Force members are achieving many more travel and ‘life’ experience opportunities then I have seen in the past 29 years of service with the ADF. They get the chance to do something for themselves and for their country.

We are at war at the moment. We currently have 2000+ service personnel serving overseas at the moment (in varying degrees of danger)and how many Australians would have a spared a second thought about their welfare? Since the vast majority of us are not experiencing any form of ‘extra’ hardships we must presume that we are becoming blasé about our commitments overseas. Regardless of your own political views on the situation spare a couple of minutes of thought for our Service men and women wherever they are in the world. They are doing it hard.

Any members wishing to travel by club sponsored bus to Shepparton for their Arms Fair/Gun Show on the 27 th of February should call me and make a booking. Cost is $20 for the bus. Entry to the show is at your own expense as is lunch at the Shepparton RSL ($12.00 main courses). Bus departs at 7.15 am from the rear of the Ballarat library (carpark).

Mark Broemmer